How introversion affected me at General Assembly

I am very introverted which becomes clear once you begin to know me. This means I am more comfortable socializing in small groups with people that I know in than with a roomful of strangers. My nickname is Spiderman which is appropriate because I am often in a corner reserving my energy. I am also facing the reality that many people I see are younger than me. This was especially true at the General Assembly, our annual meeting of the Unitarian Universalist Association. A lot of efforts were made to bring teens and young adults who were active as speakers and presenters. So it made for a much different conference than a lot of people were used to seeing.

The General Assembly is where we vote for the president, who serves a 6 year term. We also have elections for the board and several other positions. The plenary sessions include many statements of public witness where we state our values about issues. Unitarian Universalists tend to be highly educated and opinionated. And we like to study issues. We commemorated an earlier public witness by reading in unison a resolution that had passed 25 or 30 years ago. I dropped out after about 5 minutes of this. The entire thing took about 15 minutes. I guess we have a lot of people who go swimming to build up their energy before the convention.

At the plenary sessions there were seats reserved for the youth which surprised some adults who were used to sitting wherever they chose. In addition there were discussions and meeting spaces set aside for people of color and some of my friends were assigned to tell their white brethren that they needed to respect the boundary.

As for my boundaries I often sat near the back of the hall during sessions. Some of my Milwaukee friends chose to sit with me which was helpful. I took pictures of friends and sometimes went to restaurants by myself or with a friend. One veteran of General Assembly said we should pace ourselves because we will be exhausted by the effort of attempting to attend as many meetings as possible. The convention center layout contributed to this exhaustion because there were rooms hidden away at the end of long hallways. At first I enjoyed the high step counts I was getting on my phone but I learned to sit down and sometimes invite a friend over to talk with me.

I enjoyed the small group discussions where I was able to ask a few questions about some of the controversies that had arisen. One issue was the fact a couple of people retired from the jobs with the Unitarian Universalist Association and received large sums of money before the interim presidents were appointed. I asked about what changes had been made to ensure nothing like that would ever happen again. I also paid close attention when the Black Lives Matter group was talking about their plans and accomplishments. I felt it was a could time to absorb and understand as much as possible.

I was amazed by the variety of African-Americans I saw because I had never seen more than a handful of us at the First Unitarian Society. Even the videos of the Black Lives Matter event this spring had not really prepared me for this. I was excited and also wished I had been at the earlier event. There might be regional discussions and there is a retreat scheduled for this fall. My next step will be to open up and begin suggesting some activities for our Black Lives Matter Collaborative.